Results of European Elections in Spain

Zapatero loses out to Rajoy in European elections

The current economic crisis had a significant impact on the European election results in Spain with the PP main opposition right wing party of Spain winning the elections by a margin of 3.7 points more than PSOE which lost more than 700,000 votes. The IU left wing party maintained its position winning 2 seats. The Coalición por Europa and Europa de los Pueblos gained 1 seat each (which is the same situation as before) and the UPyD party gained a seat in Brussels for the first time.

The turn out for the election was estimated to be 46% which is slightly more than in 2004. The PP won 42.23% of the vote compared to 41.21% in 2004 while PSOE won 38.51% of the vote compared to 43.46% in 2004. Translated into numbers of votes this means that the PP increased their share of the vote by 221,000 – in total 6,609,941 of the electorate voted in favour of the PP- while PSOE lost more than 710,000 votes compared to 2004 with a total of 6,030,892 votes.

The socialist vote was also down by 5 points in relation to the number of votes they received in the March 2008 general elections when they obtained 43.64% of the total vote. The socialists have blamed the current economic situation for the decrease in their support. The PP now has 23 seats in the European parliament (1 less than in 2004) and PSOE has 21 seats compared to 25 seats in 2004. However, it is important to point out that the number of Spanish European MEPs has gone down from 54 to 50 as a consequence of the entrance of new countries in the EU since the last EU elections. Despite losing out yesterday PSOE is now the largest single socialist party in the European parliament. The Coalición por Europa party which is a conglomerate of nationalist groups including CiU, PNV and other groups such BLOC came third after the PP and PSOE.

It won 5.12% of the vote with 800,733 votes which is a very similar result to 2004 when they won 799.000 votes under the name of Galeusca, which then included the BNG party.

Izquierda Unida (IU) maintained its position in the EU parliament winning 2 seats despite the fact that its percentage of votes went down compared to the 2004 elections. This time it won 3.75% of the vote compared to 4.15% in 2004. Yesterday it received 583,600 votes, which is approximately 60,000 less than in 2004.

The surprise of the day was the UPyD, which won its first seat to the EU parliament after receiving 449,393 votes (2.87% of the total vote).

The sixth and last party to win representation in Brussels was Europa de los Pueblos –– a coalition which included the ERC BNG, Aralar and Los Verdes. This coalition won 391,937 votes which is 2.

5% of the total vote. This result is a slight improvement on 2004.

In the Basque country the PNV won the European elections with 28.54% of the vote which is 6.7% less than in 2004 while the PSE-EE came second. The radical Basque left nationalists known as the izquierda abertzale did not manage to gain any seats in the European parliament. The Iniciativa Internacionalista, which is supported by the former Batasuna party, which is accused of having links with ETA, won 175,000 votes which represents 1.12% of the total vote which puts it in seventh place.

The turn out for the European elections in Spain was 46% of the electorate – 15.7 million votes in total. Abstention was 54% (a similar figure compared to the 2004 European elections which so far holds the record for the number of abstentions at 54.86%) and there were 220,000 spoiled votes (1.41% of the total number of votes). Despite this participation is 2 points higher than compared to the rest of the 27 EU countries which registered on average a turn out of 43.39%.